


Penance

by mithrel



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Confessional, Gen, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 04:11:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2334800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithrel/pseuds/mithrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Reese doesn't believe in God.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penance

He went to church as a child, because it was out of his control, and didn’t really think much about whether the teachings made sense or not. In college he classified himself as an agnostic, willing to believe in the possibility, but not following any particular religion.

After he got out of the CIA, he revised that belief to atheist. He’d seen too much, _done_ too much, to believe in the possibility of any God but one who got his rocks off torturing people.

In New York, he hears the church bells, and the calls from the mosques, and they don’t really affect him. No matter what he learned as a child, some things are too heinous to be forgiven.

In the CIA, he learned to compartmentalize to keep from going insane. A job was a job, a target was a target, it was person-shaped, but not _human._  
At some point he lost count of the people he killed.

He doesn’t know why he does it. It’s not Easter, or Christmas, or any other significant day. He’s just walking through the city and passes St. Patrick’s. He can admire the beauty of the architecture, the stained glass and the towers, and see why people use places like this to commune with God, but it doesn’t mean anything to him.

He still goes inside and looks around. The pews, the altar, the confessional. Something draws him there.

He sits down and waits a moment, then… “Bless me father, for I have sinned…”


End file.
